


What's Past is Prologue

by ifitwasribald



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: A secret underground lair for some reason, Angst, I Don't Even Know, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Warning for use of anti-gay slurs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-26
Updated: 2012-08-26
Packaged: 2017-11-12 22:54:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/496562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifitwasribald/pseuds/ifitwasribald
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It only took a few minutes for everything to go to hell.  The trip back takes longer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What's Past is Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on a prompt at the Avengers Kinkmeme (at http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/8247.html?thread=18263863#t18263863)

When Bruce comes to he is afraid to open his eyes. Where he is, what he's done--those are things he'd just as well put off knowing for a little longer.

That's normal. It's how he always feels when he returns to himself.

Bruce keeps his eyes closed as he rubs one temple. What had it been this time? Not intentional--the haze of his memory tells him that much. It’s always hard to remember the minutes, and sometimes the hours, just before the Other Guy rips control out of his hands. Always hazy, nightmarish--the same as his memories of actually being the Other Guy. Mild retrograde amnesia, maybe. Like some types of head injury. It’s on his list for further research now that he has an actual lab.

He brings cool air into his lungs, lets it out. Opens his eyes.

So much for having an actual lab.

 

_Glass shattered and metal bent and so did concrete. The walls didn’t--clear walls that shouldn’t have been strong, that should have cracked and splintered and broken and didn’t. Because of the Metal Man. The man who hurt Bruce, made Bruce sick and angry and whitehot scared. Hulk didn’t know why and didn’t care. It had been too much for Bruce, so he’d had to take over, take control. And that suited him right down the ground. Which was denting satisfactorily, like maybe it would break soon._

_In the end the floor didn’t break either. Everything inside crashed and splintered and fractured into tiny pieces. But walls and ground and ceiling remained._

 

Tony doesn’t pack. He’s got mansions like spies have boltholes, and there’s nothing here that he needs. And there’s nothing and no one here that needs him. Not right now. Not until he figures out what the hell just happened.

So he doesn’t pack. He just goes. The suit is already closing around his feet when he notices that he’s clutching a bit of cloth. It’s a shirt, and not one of his. He tucks it under his own as the rest of the suit encases him.

And then he’s in the air, hovering above New York.

Only then does he realize that he still has to figure out someplace to go.

 

_Bruce’s voice was unsteady, and his eyes were all wrong. “You have no idea what I am. Get out before I show you.”_

_And then Tony was stumbling backwards, propelled by Bruce’s sharp shove. His back hit the wall of the stairwell outside the lab, and he heard Bruce’s voice again, closer to outright panic this time. “Lockdown! Now!”_

 

Bruce sits amid the ruins. The walls of the lab still stand, and if Bruce were a better man he would be thankful for small mercies. And especially thankful for the much larger mercy that JARVIS has informed him of, that Tony isn’t here, but he isn’t dead either, or even hurt.

But Bruce isn’t a better man, and he isn’t thankful. Within the four walls of what had been his lab, there’s nothing left that isn’t broken, bent, or twisted beyond recognition. And if that isn’t an apt metaphor for his life, he doesn’t know what is.

Yeah, OK, that’s melodramatic even for him, but sometimes the situation calls for it.

He tries to breathe again, tries to think back, to remember what happened. To figure out why there lurks in his gut the cold certainty that this is it, that the shining miracle that has been his life for the past few months is well and truly over.

Then he remembers. Just two words, but it’s enough.

_He knows._

The phrase is a sucker punch now, just as it was when he thought it the first time.

Because the thing is, the kids who kicked his ass behind the gym a lifetime ago were right. Bruce _is_ a faggot. Or a queer anyway--it's been been years since he’s had time or interest to get into the taxonomy of his attractions. For so long any such concerns were dwarfed by other categories, other names. After the accident he answered to _freak_ and _monster_ and did his best not to involve anyone of any gender in his personal life.

But then there was Tony. Tony with his invitations and his experiments and his little smirk and his breathtaking nonchalance about the Other Guy. Tony, who’d teased and joked and annoyed the hell out of him until he couldn’t help letting his own guard down too.

Tony, who he could never have stopped himself from loving.

Tony, whose own type is all too obvious--headlining tabloids and racking up hits on YouTube, and, on the occasional awkward morning, making chit-chat with Bruce on their way out the door. Elegant society ladies, cheeky waitresses, brilliant researchers, twenty-something party girls. Different in every respect except for being indisputably, unmistakably female.

And that’s OK. Tony’s friendship is enough. No good could come from hoping for more. 

Sooner or later every queer kid learns that there are rules about falling in love with your straight best friend. The first one is don’t. And the second is, if you do, you make sure that they never, ever know it.

_He knows._

 

Every credulous MIT student has heard stories about the top secret lab that Tony Stark built into the subbasement of the laboratory facility he donated to the university. Some students claim that it’s accessible only through an opening at the bottom of the Charles River, and others whisper that anyone who cracks its security is offered their choice of positions at Stark Industries.

These rumors are of course preposterous. 

The entrance is not underwater. That would be inconvenient, not to mention the permitting headaches. And no one has ever cracked the lab’s security, though it is true that Tony occasionally hires students whose attempts are particularly entertaining.

The best part about the place, from Tony’s perspective, is that the tangle of rumour surrounding it provides a layer of protection from SHIELD snooping. Even they can’t seem to sort out what’s real and what’s the product of the collective imagination of thousands of undergrads.

It’s also comfortable and well stocked, and Pepper knows better than to disturb him there for anything but emergencies.

What it doesn’t have is answers.

Things had been going so well. And then-- he doesn’t know. He doesn’t have enough data. 

He was _so sure_.

 

_Tony took the last step to stand close to the other man and leaned in. Their lips met and Bruce’s were stiff at first--surprised--but a moment later they were soft and hungry against Tony’s._

_It lasted only a moment, and when they broke away Tony smiled again. Didn’t think he was ever going to stop smiling. “I knew it,” he murmured. And he had. He’d been paying attention. To Bruce’s gaze when he didn’t realize Tony was looking, to the way he threw Tony’s little pranks right back at him, to his pretty little flush when Tony teased him with lewd suggestions. And now Tony had the confirmation he needed. Bruce really was interested. Tony felt as giddy as a schoolboy. He gave a little whoop of laughter. It had been half a lifetime since anything had delighted him like this._

_But then he looked back at Bruce’s face and saw there not delight, but hurt. And then, all of a sudden, cold fury._

_“Get out.”_

 

It's hours before Bruce leaves the shattered remains of his lab. He doesn't know where else to go. 

In the end he finds himself in the kitchen with a carton of leftovers from the fridge. He eats them cold because the microwave is too much work, and anyway he isn't really hungry. Eating just seems like something he should do.

And then the food is gone and he needs something else to do. A tickle of memory lingers. The moments before his transformation are still a blur of shame and anger and two words over and over again. But it’s starting to crystallize in his mind, and much as he’d like to wallow right now, he’s not sure he should be alone when it does.

The list of people that he trusts is always short, and the list of people he trusts right now who are in this hemisphere and this realm has one name on it.

Steve arrives fifteen minutes later.

"Thanks," is all Bruce says.

Steve nods, doesn't pry.

They turn on the television and find some sporting event that they can both plausibly feign interest in.  
  
The game is routine and the noise is soothing, and Bruce is a hairsbreadth from sleep when memory floods back. He stands shakily and starts for the lab, trusting Steve to keep up. "I don't know if the lab will hold up if I-- if the Other Guy comes out again."

"Not gonna happen. You've got this, Bruce. But I'll be here, just in case."

Steve's tone is as stable as he is. It's solid, comforting. Which might be why the Other Guy doesn't come out right then after all. Instead, Bruce just sinks down in a corner and tries to keep breathing.

 

_“Come on, don’t tell me you haven’t sucked a little cock in your day. With those lips of yours?”_

_A hot flush bloomed across Bruce’s cheeks and for a moment he could only stare. It was the final straw. No denying it now. Tony knew. Knew that he-- knew what he was. And this was his reaction. Teasing him, shaming him._

_People did that. To keep their distance, to make it clear that they weren’t--_

_But Tony didn’t have to. The man trusted Bruce to keep the Other Guy under control. How could he imagine that Bruce would ever, ever risk their friendship on a thing like this? Because he never would. He knew better._

_Learned the hard way, in the back of a gymnasium a lifetime ago._

_Tony grinned triumphantly. Like he was proud his jibe landed. Like he was some whole other person from the Tony that Bruce knew. Grinned and actually--the fuck?--pulled Bruce in for a kiss. A kiss that Bruce knew for the mocking gesture it was, but one that his traitorous lips embraced anyway. A kiss that he wasn’t entirely sure he was going to survive._

_A kiss that Tony broke away from with another smirk. “I knew it,” he crowed._

_No. Ohno. No. This was worse than Bruce had realized. He bowed his head and blinked carefully to keep tears from his eyes. He knows. Not just that Bruce is-- but that he-- ohno._

_Tony gave a little whoop of laughter, and Bruce was pretty sure he’d have preferred a punch in the throat._

_Suddenly the calm he’d spent half his life cultivating was gone, and he was the impotently furious boy he’d been at sixteen._

_Except that he wasn’t powerless this time._

 

The whole afternoon runs through Tony’s mind on repeat, like a song he can’t stop humming. Normal afternoon, normal work, trading quips and ideas and jokes like they'd been doing for months. Only one thing out of the ordinary.

"JARVIS, display all readings from Dr. Banner's lab on September 16th. Air quality, sound readings above and below perceptible thresholds, anomalies in any collected data. Anything."

The readings offer no more insight now than they did the first six times.

There’s only only one answer left, and it’s him. He pushed too hard, read the situation terribly wrong.

But no matter how many times he goes through it in his mind, he can’t find a way to read the situation that makes any sense to him at all.

Hypothesis: Bruce isn’t interested--doesn’t think of Tony that way and doesn’t want to.

But then why wouldn’t he have just said something? Why did it get that bad?

New hypothesis: Bruce thinks this is the price for his home and his lab in the Tower. That it’s a demand.

He couldn’t think that, could he? Tony feels sicker than he already did.

Try again: He’s straight and disgusted that Tony isn’t. 

Maybe. Homophobia doesn’t feel right but it isn’t impossible.

Or: Abuse. Tony only knows a little about Bruce’s childhood, but from what he does know, almost nothing is out of the question. And he could have triggered--

Tony slams his hand against the wall. Shit.

He needs a shower. And a bandage for his hand. And to never show his face in New York again.

 

_“Get out.”_

_“What?” Tony felt like Wile E. Coyote, standing in midair with no idea how he got there or where the ground had gone. “ Why?”_

_“I can’t even-- just go.”_

_Tony opened his mouth to object, but couldn’t find any words at all._

 

Steve stays for three more days. When the others are around he spends more time in the Tower than not, but when they’re away he tends to stick to SHIELD HQ. He likes to be part of something, and the Tower is too empty for him when it’s just Bruce and Tony.

It’s definitely too quiet now. Bruce is grateful, but he’s doing better now. And he needs to be alone to sort out what he’s going to do next.

He doesn’t know where Tony is. And neither does Steve, which isn’t a surprise, nor Fury, which is. Pepper probably knows, but she hasn’t called and he hasn’t sought her out.

Bruce starts to wonder if Tony’s waiting for him to leave. Too disgusted by Bruce to share a floor. Too frightened of Bruce to actually kick him out.

Bruce doesn’t know which hurts more.

 

_“It’s OK, Big Guy. You aren’t going to hurt me.” But Tony’s expression gave lie to his words. He was frightened. Of Bruce._

_And at this point, he should be._

_Bruce pulled in another breath but there wasn’t enough air in the world. “There’s no time.”_

 

Tony has the video memorized by now. Every joke makes him wince. They’re stupid or childish or crude. He sees each one coming, wishes he could keep it from spilling out of his lips. Wishes he could make the whole sequence of events just stop, before it all spins out of control.

But he’s as powerless to turn it off now as he was to stop it when it happened.

The feed ends, the same way it always does, with Big Green breaking the lab down to its component parts.

Tony can finally look away, and when he does his eyes fall on the shirt crumpled in a chair. He picks it up, enjoys the soft give of bunched fabric in his hands. Raises it to his face, surreptitious even though there’s no one there to see.

He inhales slowly, and can’t help but think again of that kiss. Knowing what had followed, not knowing why, the memory shouldn’t be sweet. But it is.

 

_Sparks flew from a faulty wire and Tony snatched his hand away. “Cocksucker,” he cursed._

_Then he looked over at Bruce, who was sprawled on the floor, fiddling with machinery for some reason or other. “Not that I’m against cocksucking as a rule. It’s just an expression.” Tony knew he was rambling, but he liked rambling--it beat the hell out of silence. “I mean, what’s not to like about cocksucking? Fun on both ends.”_

_Bruce finally stood and shed his safety gear. “What?”_

_“Come on, don’t tell me you haven’t sucked a little cock in your day. With those lips of yours?”_

_A pretty flush spread across Bruce’s cheeks. God he was hot when he was flustered._

_Tony grinned--couldn’t help it. Bruce was a picture._

_He took the last step to stand close to the other man and leaned in._

 

Two days after Bruce explains to Fury that he really, truly doesn’t know where Tony went, Natasha calls from wherever she and Clint were sent this time.

She doesn’t beat around the bush. Just asks the question he’s waiting for. "What happened?"

Bruce doesn't want to tell her, but SHIELD's going to need to know sooner or later, and better her than Fury or Hill. "Tony... made some jokes. And they were--" He ducks his head, stares at his feet, and though she can't see it, she knows to wait anyway. "The Other Guy came out."

She lets the silence stretch, finally breaks it. "Those must have been some jokes," she says softly.

"They were about--" He has to say it. Has to just spit it out. "I'm a-- I'm queer. They were about that.”

“OK.” There’s a question to the word. She doesn’t spell it out, though, and he has a feeling she can wait a hell of a lot longer than he can.

“I didn’t mean to-- I wasn’t hitting on him, or anything. Maybe he thought I was. I don’t know.” 

He knows she still doesn’t understand, but no matter how long she lets the conversation lapse, he can’t bring himself to explain further. He moves on. “I didn’t have control. Tony got out in time, but he knows now, that he can’t trust me.” In more ways than one. “So that’s why he’s gone.” Bruce isn’t as sure of that as he sounds, but it’s the best theory he’s got.

Natasha’s voice is gentle. “What did he say to you?”

“He kissed me,” Bruce answers eventually, “as a joke. He thought it was funny.”

“What makes you think it was a joke?”

“What else would it be?”

The pieces seem to finally click for Natasha. “You think he’s straight.”

Now it’s Bruce’s turn to let the silence build--not strategically, the way that she does it, but because his brain can’t possibly deal with anything as practical as speech right now.

“He kissed you,” she breathes, “and you--”

Bruce shook his head. “No. It wasn’t like that.” 

Natasha doesn’t answer.

“Oh God,” he whispers.

 

_He closed his eyes, tried to count to something astronomically high, but it was already way too late. His veins burned, and he felt the sickening looseness at each and every joint. His fists were already changing when they wrapped around Tony’s shirtfront._

_But his words were still Bruce’s when he spoke. “You have no idea what I am. Get out before I show you.”_

 

“Warning, security breach in progress.”

Tony puts down the book that he isn’t reading anyway. He stands, examines the computer monitor. Then he snorts. “Kid’s not even past the second ring. Hasn’t even _found_ the second ring. Probably still thinks it’s the security for the registrar’s office. The subroutine’s not to bother me until somebody gets at least past the fourth.”

“Apologies, sir. I thought that perhaps it would not be a bother.”

“You’re trying to distract me.”

“I merely calculated that a diversion might not be unwelcome.”

“Hmph.”

“Ms. Potts would surely appreciate a call. She has made a number of inquiries regarding the prospects for your return.”

“Not right now.” He picks up the book, but almost immediately puts it down again. “Yeah, call her.”

Pepper picks up immediately. “Tony, what are you doing? Steve is frantic, and Fury’s barged into my office three times.”

“You didn’t tell them...”

She sighs. “No, Tony, the secret of your underground lair is safe with me.”

“Thanks.” He means it.

“Thank me by coming home and getting SHIELD off my back.”

“I just need a little more time.”

“To do what?”

“To... to figure it out.”

She sighs again. “Here’s a wild notion-- _ask him_.”

“Can’t. Not until I know enough not to make things worse.”

 

_“It’s OK, Big Guy. You aren’t going to hurt me.” But Tony had to admit that he’d never seen Bruce like this before. Not calm, not collected or mellow or resigned or determined. For once Bruce looked like the ticking bomb he thought he was._

_“There’s no time.”_

 

Bruce sips his sixth cup of tea of the night and starts a third pass over the SHIELD file that Natasha sent him. He likes to think that she cleared it with Fury first, but frankly he doesn’t really care if a team of SHIELD agents bursts through the door right now, except that it might slow him down. He has to find Tony and figure out what the hell happened, and the file is his best hope.

SHIELD has already checked all of Tony’s usual haunts, and Bruce is left to sift through rumors, innuendos, and property records in search of other possibilities. He’s ruled out most of those himself.

In the end Bruce figures it’s down to the flat that SHIELD is pretty sure Tony maintains in New Orleans or the basement lab rumored to exist underneath MIT. MIT wins out because it’s clever in a way that Bruce is pretty sure Tony would appreciate. Plus, it’s a hell of a lot closer.

 

_Tony grinned and pulled Bruce in for a kiss. A kiss that Bruce’s traitorous lips embraced. A kiss that was soft and oh so sweet and everything he would never have. A kiss that he wasn’t entirely sure he was going to survive._

 

Tony isn’t even pretending to read when JARVIS pings gently. “A security breach has reached layer five.”

This should at least be diverting. Five’s a bitch. Though seven’s the one he’s most proud of. He’s still waiting to see eight through ten in action.

“Not bad,” Tony murmurs as he watches code multiply on his viewscreen. This kid is elegant, sharp. Layer five is down in half the time it should be.

Tony’s mesmerized. No random student should be this good. But no one else should even know where to start.

By layer eight Tony realizes that the approach is familiar. It’s almost what Tony would have used--that’s why it’s working so well.

The next level requires actual physical presence, so Tony switches on the camera feed and waits.

When a familiar figure enters the frame, he realizes that Bruce is who he expected all along. Which doesn’t make sense, because Bruce is a genius, but he’s not really a computer guy. Not like this.

“JARVIS?”

“Yes sir.”

“How’s he managing this?”

“Dr. Banner has a highly intuitive grasp of the overall security architecture.”

“And his vaunted intuition is being put into practice how exactly?”

JARVIS sounds almost embarassed. “Dr. Banner was very persuasive.”

Tony practically growls. “Betrayed by my own AI.” He took a deep breath and drew himself to his full height. “Just open the damn doors.”

“Yes sir.”

The doors open.

 

Face to face with Tony, Bruce immediately recognizes the flaw in his plan. Finding Tony, check. Having the slightest idea what to say? Not so much.

Which more or less explains why, after a week of worrying and a week of looking and three hours hacking into his hidey-hole, Bruce’s first words to Tony are: “That’s my shirt.”

Tony just looks at him, mouth hanging ever so slightly open. Finally he looks down at the shirt he’s wearing, and then back at Bruce. He gives a little chuckle, which is followed by a guffaw, and then Bruce snorts, and suddenly they’re both laughing uproariously, hysterically, gasping for breath and wiping tears from their eyes.

“You came for the shirt?” Tony finally manages.

Bruce is still laughing too hard to do more than shake his head vigorously, and that sets Tony off again. 

It’s several minutes before either recovers enough to speak, and even then neither does right away.

Bruce meets Tony’s eyes, ready to apologize. Ready to reassure the other man that he knows he lost control, that he’s sorry, so sorry, and that he’ll leave and never be a danger to Tony like that again. He opens his mouth, and what comes out is: “why did you-- why did you kiss me?”

Tony frowns and his brow furrows. Then he shrugs. “I wanted to. You were--” a little smile touches Tony’s lips, and he shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I still don’t know what I did wrong, but whatever it is, I apologize.”

Bruce knows this is going to sound stupid, but he has to ask anyway. “You weren’t... mocking me? For being--” He still can’t say it.

“What the hell kind of piece of shit would--” He stops, a stunned look on his face. “You actually thought that I-- that the kiss was--” Tony collapsed into a chair. “Sonofabitch,” he murmured.

The hurt in his eyes makes Bruce want to grovel, to run, to confess. For once he goes with the practical option. “I didn’t know what else to think. You’re straight, and I-- I never told you what I was, and you found out, and that’s... that’s never good. I didn’t mean to lose it,” he can hear his voice tremble. “I didn’t know I was losing it until it was too late. I’m so sorry.”

And then Tony’s arms are around him, warm and strong and almost holding him up, which is good, because his knees feel weak. “A, you didn’t lose it--you got me out and you got yourself contained and then you did what you had to. B, for the record I’m really not straight, which I would have thought was obvious at this point, but apparently that whole genius thing is a little overblown. And C,” Tony pulled back to look Bruce in the eye. “I know who you are. Obviously I don’t know everything about you, and obviously I was reading you ten kinds of wrong that day. But who you _are_? I’m all over that.”

Tony pauses to let Bruce answer, and for a moment Bruce can only stare. Finally he manages to speak. “So, can we try that kissing thing again?”

“Think we’ll get it right this time?”

“I really do.”


End file.
